The next big challenge for the cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) market is trust, according to Bob Friday, CTO of Juniper Networks' AI-driven enterprise business.

“The question is how long does it take for an enterprise customer to trust a virtual AI assistant to join their team,” he asked. To this end, Juniper invests in conversational interface technologies to “get a virtual AI assistant to interact with the IT team on a par with the human.”

“The next big transition is really going from dashboards to conversational interfaces as being another way of getting around the complexity of networks,” he explained. “This is a much easier way for people to get data in and out of a network.”

Juniper has big plans to expand its cloud-based AI services. It's also focusing on partnerships to extend security into the cloud and exploring opportunities to deploy private cellular networks, Friday said in an interview with SDxCentral.

“Cloud AI is a big differentiator for Juniper right now because we do have a clean foundation to work on,” Friday told SDxCentral. “Cloud AI [capabilities] were fundamentally architectural changes in networking … that required a blank sheet of startup paper.” 

This puts legacy vendors like Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Aruba at a disadvantage, he added. “It's hard for them to start from scratch and try to figure it out,” Friday claimed.

On top of the cloud-based AI services, Juniper continues moving security services to the cloud to build out its secure access service edge (SASE) architecture, Friday said.

For the SASE networking component, Juniper already has a strong presence in the SD-WAN market, thanks to the acquisition of 128 Technologies last year. However, the company still lacks core security functionality, which it plans to roll out over the next year both in the form of organic products and partnerships, Kate Adam, senior director of security product marketing at Juniper, told SDxCentral in an earlier interview.

“Juniper security focuses on partnerships right now in terms of extending Juniper security value into the cloud,” Friday said, referring to the current plan for the SASE security. “I would say 2022 is gonna be more about integrating existing acquisitions into Juniper,” as opposed to buying additional companies, he added.

Juniper acquired Mist, Apstra, and 128 Technologies over the last three years to boost its automation, AI, intent-based networking, and SD-WAN capabilities and offerings. 

Juniper bought Mist for $405 million in early 2019, and the deal also brought Friday, who co-founded Mist, to Juniper. Mist started out as a wireless LAN vendor, and it also built an AI engine called Marvis. The company’s AI functionality won Juniper over, and now Mist serves as the heart of Juniper’s AI-based enterprise strategy with Marvis as its brain. 

Juniper's investments in integrating the Mist platform into its network portfolio is a key differentiator, Gartner wrote in its recent Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure report. The firm named Juniper as one of the leaders, along with HPE Aruba, Extreme Networks, and Cisco.

While Juniper CEO Rami Rahim supports spreading Mist’s across Juniper, the Mist platform is primarily a cloud-based service. And as the integration of Mist’s technology-forward culture continues, it may bring disruption to both internal business units and to the end user, Gartner warns.

“Moving to the cloud is not a negative,” Friday argued. “Even our on-prem customers, there's so much value in terms of the cloud being such a better way to manage and develop software.”

In addition to cloud AI and cloud security, Juniper is also exploring opportunities to deploy private cellular networks as it offers more mobile services, Friday said. 

The federal government's new spectrum regulations are starting to give enterprises access to cellular spectrum, which opens doors for private cellular networks services.

“​​Juniper is a networking company,” Friday said. “Juniper's mission is really to help connect people to the internet … so private cellular, private WiFi networking falls right into that Juniper’s mission of helping keep the world connected.”